Laughing About It
by music nimf
Summary: AU set where Artemis died during the time skip. On the worst possible day, Tim asks Dick who the girl in the picture is.


"Today will be a sunny Gotham day, partly cloudy with little chance of rain," Dick murmured to himself dryly. And it was true. It was an average day with amiable weather. A slight breeze had blown with the smell of cut grass and sprinkler water. The sound of cars commuting between Gotham and Metropolis could be heard as a steady rhythm in the background until it seemed to became a part of the silence. Dick had made sure to note all of this earlier today. Right now, though, he was back at Wayne Manner undoing his tie as he ascended the master staircase.

It had been a little less than five months since he had moved out of the manner and permanently into his room at Mt. Justice so a sense of independence rebelled against what he was about to do, but unexpected longing for the bed, the room, the life that had been his for nine years still lingered keenly in his muscles and won out. Saying that it was just one of those days would be an understatement.

He opened the door to his room, fully expecting to see the Flying Graysons poster on the wall and the other knick knacks that he had collected in his non-superhero life. Most importantly he had expected to be alone, which was all he wanted right now. Dick was a social person compared to some of the company he kept, but when he got overwhelmed by his emotions he needed time to himself to think, just like all of the others within Batman's clan. Except perhaps Alfred, who was most likely either busy making sure that Bruce ate and slept at all this week or talking Barbara out of living out her youth in the training room. However, Dick was not the only one in the room. There was someone sitting in the window.

The curtains bounced and swayed in the breeze, half obscuring the male form in the window, and for a moment Dick readied himself in a defensive stance disguised as a startled stumble backwards, but fell out of it when he realized that he knew the person sitting on his window sill.

"Tim?" he asked as his eyebrows shot up in surprise, "What are you doing here?" Tim just look up at him, the edges of his mouth moving upward shakily, the attempted smile so weak that Dick didn't even bother to see if it reached his eyes.

"I thought that would be obvious," he replied back, smile all but collapsing off his face as he turned his head to look into the distance. Dick stared at him, noticing that Tim had one foot on his desk and on the window sill, his crisp white shirt contrasting stylishly with his black, starched pants and slightly worn loafers. That along with the breeze that slightly blew his semi-gelled hair against his forehead made him look the picture of melancholy.

All of the surprise melted away at Tim's words, replaced by grim distress which was quickly concealed by the half-obnoxious, unenlightening poker face that he had perfected.

"You heard," he stated matter-of-fact, "When did you get back?" Tim just kept staring out, clearly determined not to answer his question. Annoyed, Dick wanted to tell him to get out of his room and leave him alone. A part of him, though, was telling him that he should be grateful that Tim was alive and well and here, considering what kind of morning he'd had, even if all he wanted was for him to go away right now. Dick sighed and threw himself on his bed, the wood creaking slightly at the extra force, and put his hand over his eyes. As long as Tim was going to remain silent, he could at least pretend that he wasn't in the room.

Someday he would ask Tim about his training. The boy had been gone for six months to train with that assassin woman and they had no idea when he would be coming back. He would ask him about the places he had been and the people he met. He would ask him to teach him the new moves he had learned and he would not ask what it had cost him to learn them. But today he was going to pretend that Tim did not exist.

Today he had buried another person he had cared about.

A lump formed in his throat as he remembered the way the freshly turned dirt contrasted with the bright green grass and the headstone that marked a familiar name, looking like something out of his worst nightmares, but it was real. It was all painfully real.

He knew that this life of burying people was the life he chose when he decided to partner up with Superheroes and become Robin. He didn't know it then at the ripe old age of nine. He had thought that what happened to his parents would not happen to anyone close to him again because he was strong and would protect them or die trying. He knew now how hard that was to maintain when your friends believed the same and were constantly putting themselves in danger. He knew it only too well now. Knew it two years ago when the funeral he had gone to had been one of his team.

"Who is this?" a voice cut through his thoughts and for a moment he felt irrationally angry at having his solitude interrupted. He glared up at the ceiling between his fingers. For a moment he didn't move as he allowed resentment to flow through him, but slowly sat up so that he was facing his open window. Tim was looking at the photos on his desk from his place in the window.

Dick sighed, thinking about flopping down onto his bed again and ignoring the teen, but he felt the obligation to be patient and mature ache in his bones, much to his dismay. He was the older of the two after all and he felt that Tim believed him to be endlessly reliable and for whatever reason he did not want to disillusion him to the contrary.

Dick pushed himself off his bed and walked toward his desk, hiding his reluctance. He glanced at Tim who nodded his head toward the corner of the desk that was closest to the window. Dick looked at the two photo frames and hovered his hand over the biggest one.

"No, the other one," Tim's voice corrected his movement. Dick moved his hand to the small, square frame from its place directly next to the larger frame and picked it up. A familiar wave sadness washed over his already grief stricken mind once he got a good look at the photo.

"Who is she?" Tim's soft voice asked with semi-forced curiosity, a somewhat transparent attempt at making conversation. Dick really would have kicked him out if he realized what Tim was trying to do, but he was too distracted to pick up any nuance to his words.

Who indeed. He allowed his newest loss to slip away from his mind with the rest of the world, focused only on the picture. Dick shouldn't have been shocked to see the picture. It had been sitting on his desk for years and he had glanced at it briefly the few times he actually used this desk. And it wasn't the memories that inevitably came from seeing her face; the kind of memories like realizing that the piece of spattered brain on your shoe belonged to your father, the ones that he kept in a dark corner, the kind that created Black Mantas and Batmans. No, what shocked him was what he had forgotten.

The picture was low quality, taken from an angle that suggested that one of the subjects in the photo had taken it. In it was a girl with blond hair and Asian features, Artemis, and next to her was a younger version of himself smiling at the camera and, most astonishingly, with nothing covering his eyes. It was the only picture he had with Artemis where they were both out of uniform. The words he had said that day:

_We'll laugh about this someday._

But they never would. Just like they would never get pizza after school or go to the same graduation parties or team up, just the two of them, to stop a standard Gotham mid-afternoon robbery. Because she was dead. She had died and there was a lot to remember about her, but nothing more. She would never help Zatanna kick his ass after their breakup. She and Wally would never share a flat when they went off to college together. Her mother would never...

"Dick!" a voice half-shouted at him, pulling him back to Earth. His head shot up quickly in response and he turned to where he thought he had heard the voice, suddenly remembering who was in the room with him when he saw Tim. He was still sitting in the window sill, but now he was facing him fully, legs dangling inside of his room, almost touching the floor. His exasperated look transformed into concern smoothly when Dick looked at him.

"Are you?" but Tim cut himself off and shook his head as if to dispel an unwanted thought, "Of course you're not. Not after," but he didn't finish that sentence either, this time clenching his jaw as if to forcibly keep the words trapped behind his teeth. Tim closed his eyes and took a few calming breaths and on his last exhale he seemed calm, but his face looked suddenly weary and his eyes concerned. He half-heartedly gestured to Dick's general person, distress hidden just beneath the surface.

"You're crying," Tim said in a monotone, helplessness clinging to his words, and averted his eyes to stare at the floor.

Dick looked at him curiously and touched his own face. Sure enough, wet lines ran around his cheekbones. Astonished that he hadn't noticed himself crying, he couldn't help himself. It was too much. It was all too much. So, hunched over his desk, he laughed. First a sincere chuckle, then a bitter one, then a string of forced accented exhales, then silence. Dick just stared ahead, not a single thought in his head.

After long, silent moments Dick raised his head and straightened up just to move at all. He noticed that Tim hadn't taken his gaze off of the floor, but didn't pay him much more attention because he was too busy walking to the door. He opened the door and paused for a second, looking back at Tim.

"A friend."

Tim turned to look at him, eyes wide. He cleared his throat.

"Er, what?"

Dick nodded toward the upturned picture frame on his desk and Tim's eyes followed.

"You asked me who that is. She's a friend."

Tim stared at him, which Dick indulged for all of five seconds before he was out of the room, door closed gently behind him. He decided that he would go make Alfred a terrible cup of tea and join Babs in the training room. He'd get plenty of time alone on patrol that night.

Six months later Nightwing would introduce Tim as the newest Robin to the team. Tim would learn more about this Artemis Crock in M'gann's stories and Beastboy's excitement, Superboy's anger and Kaldur's disappointment. Wally's clenched jaw. He added all of this to what he had learned from Dick's laugh that day and realized just what he stood to gain and what he stood to lose by joining this new team.


End file.
